The Manga Curmudgeon

Spending too much on comics, then talking too much about them

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Recon recon

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Since I’m too lazy to develop interesting content of my own, I’ll point you towards two really solid pieces over at the recently renovated Manga Recon:

First up is a round-table on MR contributors’ favorite CMX titles. (Note to self: try once again to convince people that Monster Collection: The Girl Who Can Deal With Magical Monsters is, in spite of its dubious provenance and cumbersome title, surprisingly awesome. Also: poach idea for future blog post or column.)

Second is a report on Yaoi-Con 2008 from Isaac Hale, “a real living and breathing gay male.” It’s well worth reading:

“There were definitely some nice aspects of the Con: I wasn’t assumed to be heterosexual (as I am everywhere else) and I was definitely welcomed by all the panelists and industry staff with great warmth. Furthermore, it was just relaxing to be in a place where male x male romance was desirable as opposed to being stigmatized. Generally though, that’s where my warm fuzzies ended.”

I’m sure he’ll get crap for it from people who think Yaoi Con is just fine the way it is, “Bishonen Spanking Inferno” and all, but I’m grateful for his frankness and perspective.

Upcoming 8/4/2008

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Looking at the current ComicList, it’s an overwhelming week of new releases with quality titles from just about everyone pitched for just about every demographic. If I had to pick just one title to recommend, I couldn’t. I couldn’t even pick just one Viz title to recommend. I even find myself resorting to the bulleted list, so abundant is the quality on offer.

  • Crayon Shinchan Vol. 4, by Yoshito Usui (CMX)
  • Dororo Vol. 3, by Osamu Tezuka (Vertical)
  • High School Debut Vol. 5, by Kazune Kawahara (Viz)
  • Honey and Clover Vol. 3, by Chica Umino (Viz)
  • The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service Vol. 7, by Eiji Otsuka and Housui Yamazaki (Dark Horse)
  • Mushishi Vol. 5, by Yuki Urushibara (Del Rey)
  • Nana Vol. 12, by Ai Yazawa (Viz)
  • Sand Chronicles Vol. 3, by Hinako Ashihara (Viz)
  • Slam Dunk Vol. 1, by Takehiko Inoue (Viz)

    • So, we’ve got low comedy, high adventure, coming-of-age angst, imaginative horror, lore and legend, and interpersonal drama. And that’s just in Dororo. (I kid, I kid. No I don’t, but you know what I mean.)

    No birds were harmed in the writing of this post

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    Chris Butcher offers some excellent advice on nurturing the next phase of the manga industry:

    “If you’ve got a store that believes in the material, and that keeps it in stock, not just makes it available for pre-order, then you can sell the material. In short, we have to invest in the industry we want, not just as retailers, but as journalists and pundits by covering the material we like, and as consumers by supporting the books we like with our dollars.

    “That’s my prescription for the manga industry: let’s make the industry we want, do our best to convert fashion into function, and celebrate our successes where we find them rather than complain that we’re not quite successful enough.”

    I’m all about combining errands, so here’s a possible way to kill two birds with one stone. (Sorry about the inherent animal cruelty of that phrase, but I haven’t had enough caffeine to recall a more benevolent alternative.) If you’re attending Comic-Con International and find some extra spending money in your pocket because you don’t feel like giving any to the Manchester Grand Hyatt, you could swing by the Fanfare/Ponent Mon booth (C04) and buy some of their lovely, lovely books. As Deb Aoki noted, Fanfare’s distribution system with Atlas isn’t quite 100% yet, so SDCC is probably your best chance to browse the publisher’s catalogue, gape in wonder at books like The Walking Man, Japan as Viewed by 17 Creators, and Kinderbook, and to pick up a copy of Hideo Azuma’s nothing-else-like-it Disappearance Diary (which I reviewed here).

    Now, as for “supporting the books we like with our dollars,” Brigid Alverson works in an excellent way to do that in a recent post at MangaBlog: ordering titles via your local bookstore, especially if they’re books that might not otherwise get shelved. This strikes me as a great way to put offbeat titles on a store’s radar, and I’ve heard from various people that many stores will order a couple of shelf copies of a title when they get a special order. Also, you don’t have to worry about potentially climbing shipping costs from online retailers, though you still have to pay for gas to get to the local big box.

    At Comics Should Be Good, Danielle Leigh gives a fine example of “covering the material we like” with her latest Manga Before Flowers column on CMX, DC’s stealth manga division:

    “But CMX made me a fan for life by bringing over really extraordinary titles that no one else ever has and published them on a very consistent schedule over the past few years (Even though three of four volumes of Eroica a year isn’t a lot, it is enough to make me happy).”

    Upcoming 7/2/2008

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    If it doesn’t stop raining soon, I’m going to have to lease my back yard out for pasture. I will be reducing my dependence on fossil fuels and supporting sustainable production, and I will give all of the cows names and compost their manure.

    And now, on to this week’s ComicList. You know what’s weird? I’m excited about a Marvel comic, and I am going to buy it, if the local shop orders any shelf copies. That comic would be Patsy Walker: Hellcat #1, written by Kathryn Immonen and drawn and inked by David LaFuente Garcia. Hellcat is one of those characters that I’ve always loved in spite of the fact that she’s been ill-used for the vast majority of her costumed career. So basically my attachment to the character is pure, masochistic sentiment, but Matthew Brady says it’s got “a fun, jaunty tone,” and it’s just so nice to see Hellcat claw her way out of the refrigerator and into a solo series that I feel strangely obligated to support the book.

    Hm… it’s shaping up to be Women I Really Like Week, now that I delve deeper into Wednesday’s releases. I very much loved Kaoru Mori’s elegant, heartfelt Emma, so I can’t wait to read Mori’s Shirley (both books from CMX), which leaves the Victorians behind to explore the world of Edwardian maids. The uniforms may show more ankle, but I’m betting the meticulous angst will be just as plentiful.

    It had its pleasures, but I didn’t enjoy the first volume of Gabrielle Bell’s Lucky (Drawn and Quarterly) as much as I did When I’m Old and Other Stories (Alternative Comics), but I’m sure I’ll pick up the second installment at some point.

    I haven’t really thought too carefully about exactly which Tokyopop titles survive the coming purge, but I do know that I hope that Mari Ohazaki’s Suppli comes out on the other side. I don’t think any of us need to worry about Natsuki Takaya’s Fruits Basket, which is as heartbreaking as it is popular.

    Viz keeps the estrogen flowing with new volumes of Ai Yazawa’s Nana and Kazune Kawahara’s High School Debut. You all know how I feel about Yazawa’s work by this point, so let me just say how much I love High School Debut. I’m not going to say it’s as good as Hinako Ashihara’s Sand Chronicles, but it shares a lot of that book’s positive qualities: great characters, nicely developed relationships, carefully observed emotional moments, and very attractive art.

    And now, for the token shônen book of the week. Okay, that’s not really fair, because it would be a meritorious entry on any Wednesday, even when the comics industry wasn’t trying to drown me in tears. Like just about everyone else, I enjoyed the first two volumes of Hiro Mashima’s Fairy Tail (released simultaneously by Del Rey), about a whacked-out guild of magicians. The third installment arrives Wednesday.

    Upcoming 5/21/2008

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    There wasn’t much room for manga in the April graphic novel sales figures at ICv2. Only eight titles cracked the top 100, and only one (the 10th volume of Path of the Assassin from Dark Horse) cracked the top 50.

    There isn’t the metric tonnage of new manga arriving in comic shops this week, which is kind of a relief, to be honest.

    My personal highlight is the fourth volume of Yuki Urushibara’s Mushishi (Del Rey). Gorgeous, episodic fantasy stories about a wandering shaman who helps people cope with their environments and the powerful, primordial bugs that share them.

    I’m glad I have a vacation coming up, because it means I’ll have time to catch up with series like Yuki Nakaji’s Venus in Love (CMX), which releases its third volume Wednesday. It’s a sweet, low-key romantic comedy about a boy and a girl in love… with the same boy. I think I’m going to fill a whole tote with “wallow manga.”

    Skim by Mariko and Jillian Tamaki (Groundwood Books) has gotten some good some good early response, and I must say I’m intrigued by the premise: “Depression, love, sexual identity, crushes, manipulative peers—teen life in all its dramatic complexities is explored in this touching, pitch perfect, literary graphic masterpiece.” Now that’s the high school I remember.

    And not to beat an undead horse, but if you must spend money on a comic by Jessica Abel this summer, go for the paperback collection of La Perdida (Pantheon). It’s about a young woman who tries to find herself in Mexico and ends up in dramatically over her head. No vampires, but lots of flesh-and-blood drama.

    Upcoming 5/7/2008

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    Record gas prices? Check! Skyrocketing food costs? Double-check! Humongous list of new comic book releases for the week? Triple-check!

    Some of these series have been running for some time now, so it might be useful to provide some introductions. Also, I really like Manga Recon’s new Weekly Recon format, so I’m going to swipe it.

    Crayon Shinchan Vol. 2, by Yoshito Usui, CMX: I can’t really put it any better than Matthew Brady: “Also: kids are horrible, awful creatures. Good times!” Exactly. If I’m going to be completely truthful, I’ll admit that I prefer the anime to the manga, but the second half of the first volume of the manga, when the setting shifted from home to school, was laugh-out-loud funny. Great. Now the infectious theme song is running through my head again.

    Eden: It’s an Endless World! Vol. 10, by Hiroki Endo, Dark Horse: A bizarre virus has decimated the population, leaving all kinds of power struggles in play. Corporate moguls, political bigwigs, and terrorists fight for the future of a world that may not be worth the trouble. It’s beautifully drawn and often quite gripping as it combines the personal with the political.

    King of Thorn Vol. 4, by Yuji Iwahara, Tokyopop: Another post-viral-apocalypse comic that’s much more conventional in its structure. Think The Poseidon Adventure set in a cryogenic research facility. A group of disease carriers wake up to find themselves abandoned in said facility, which is overrun with bizarre monsters. The demographically familiar band struggles to find a way out and, honesty compels me to admit, to display distinct personalities beyond their character types. But Iwahara’s art is a treat.

    Kitchen Princess Vol. 6, by Natsumi Ando and Miyuki Kobayashi, Del Rey: The orphan child of two gifted pastry chefs bakes her way into a snooty private school to track down the boy of her dreams. That sounds awfully saccharine and formulaic, and the series started off in that vein, but the creators have taken off the oven mitts and started delivering some serious emotional punches as the series has progressed. The previous volume ended on a cliffhanger rather more perilous than is usual for school-romance manga, and I’m eager to see what happens next.

    High School Debut Vol. 3, by Kazune Kawahara, Viz – Shojo Beat: This imprint has three crack-tastic releases this week. The premise of this series – a sporty girl enters high school and decides she wants a boyfriend, securing a hunky male mentor to advise her on issues of dateability – is extremely formulaic and blissfully irrelevant in light of its other charms. Those include terrific characters and emotionally specific writing that can really make you catch your breath. I’m perfectly happy to see a familiar formula executed with panache, but I think I’m even happier to see one subverted so feelingly.

    Hikaru No Go Vol. 12, by Yumi Hotta and Takeshi Obata, Viz – Shonen Jump: I went on about this title at some length in yesterday’s Flipped column, so I’ll just summarize its selling points: likeable characters, terrific art, and a surprisingly intriguing and flexible premise about a board game.

    Nana Vol. 10, by Ai Yazawa, Viz – Shojo Beat: Two young women named Nana meet on a train to Tokyo and strike up an unlikely but enduring friendship. The series consistently provides sexy urban soap opera, and it’s currently in the midst of a perfect storm of personal and professional conflicts.

    Salt Water Taffy Vol. 1, by Matthew Loux, Oni Press: This is delightful, as I mentioned in a review last week. Loux introduces his protagonist brothers to the weird and wonderful charms of a coastal town in Maine.

    Sand Chronicles Vol. 2, by Hinako Ashihara, Viz – Shojo Beat: Ashihara doesn’t ask for much; she merely wants to rip your heart out with her pitch-perfect episodes from a girl’s coming of age. Like High School Debut, there’s a shocking quantity of recognizable human behavior here. Unlike that worthy book, Sand Chronicles doesn’t even pretend to follow a formula as it cherry-picks key moments from the adolescence of its engaging heroine, Ann Uekusa. Extremely absorbing, grounded storytelling, and beautiful art.

    Upcoming April 30, 2008

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    Glancing at the ComicList for Wednseday, April 30, 2008, I can’t help noting that it’s a strong week for Good Comics for Kids:

    Dark Horse delivers the entire Dayan Collection, four hardcover children’s books by Akiko Ikeda. They’re about a mischievous cat, and Ikeda’s full-color illustrations look absolutely beautiful.

    CMX delivers the fourth volume of Masashi Tanaka’s Gon, wordless, beautifully drawn stories about a tiny dinosaur with a big appetite for life.

    Skewing slightly older is the fourth volume of Alive (Del Rey), written by Tadashi Kawashima and illustrated by Adachitoka. This series started with two gripping volumes that propelled its primary story – malevolent forces surreptitiously invade the planet and trigger a wave of suicides, and only a handful of people suspect what’s truly happening. The third volume was sort of a digression, with the heroic principals sidetracked from their quest by tangentially related perils. That threw me a bit, but it’s still a very entertaining comic with great characters and eye-catching art.

    Would I hand the first volume of Osamu Tezuka’s Dororo (Vertical) to a kid? I’m not really sure. On one hand, it’s Tezuka, and everyone should read some Tezuka. On the other hand, it’s on the gruesome side, packed with bloody battles and some seriously dark content. It’s about a young man, Hyakkimaru, who lost all of his body parts thanks to his father’s ambition and greed. Hyakkimaru is forced on a quest across a war-ravaged landscape to seek and destroy the demons who took his body in trade. He’s joined by young thief Dororo, whose background is almost as harsh. But it’s Tezuka. So I’ll recommend it to everyone else, and they can decide when their kids are ready for it. How’s that for evasion?

    Summer reading

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    Okay, so Previews order forms are due tomorrow. I never promised to be timely, and there’s good stuff available.

    I’ve made my feelings about Kaoru Mori’s Emma abundantly clear, so I’m excited the follow-up, Shirley (CMX). It’s a collection of shorts about English maids, and I’m sure it will be lovely. (Page 125.)

    I’m not really the audience for books about making comics, but I admire the work of Jessica (La Perdida) Abel and Matt (Odds Off or, L’Amour Foutu) Madden enormously, so I’m sure Drawing Words & Writing Pictures (First Second) will be a valuable resource. (Page 291.)

    Though I’m convinced there must be many more juicy and telling crimes from the Victorian era, Rick Geary’s shift to A Treasury of 20th Century Murder won’t keep me from greedily consuming The Lindbergh Child (NBM). Geary’s true-crime comics are some of the best reads out there. (Page 317.)

    A new comic from Hope Larson is always cause for celebration. Simon & Schuster offers Chiggers, a tale of summer-camp complications between two best friends. (Page 332.)

    There’s something about Akira Toriyama’s Dragon Ball books that puts me off, but I’ve liked what I’ve read of his silly, charming Dr. Slump. Viz rolls out another all-ages adventure, Cowa!, which has the added benefit of starring baby monsters. (Page 374.)

    Enticing as the prospect of a new shot at Takehiko Inoue’s Slam Dunk is, I think I’m more excited about the impending arrival of his series, Real (Viz). It’s another sports series, this time about wheelchair basketball, and it won the Excellence Prize at the 2001 Japan Media Arts Festival. (Page 379.)

    They aren’t exactly debuts, but I’m happy to see new installments of former ICE Kunion titles showing up in rotation from Yen Press. I’m particularly looking forward to the second volume of Soo Hee Park’s Goong, the tale of an ordinary girl set to marry a member of the royal family. (Page 382.)

    Upcoming 4/9/2008

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    I’m so confused by this week’s shipping list. Things seem to have reappeared in spite of having shipped a while ago, or at least they were listed as arrivals on previous weeks. Ah well.

    Surely the pick of the week will be the second volume of Joann Sfar’s The Rabbi’s Cat (Pantheon). The first collection of this series was my introduction to Sfar’s work, and it was love at first sight. I can’t wait to catch up with the philosophical feline.

    Has the third volume of Yuki Urushibara’s splendid Mushishi (Del Rey) been in bookstores for a while and is just now arriving in comic shops? Possibly. I reviewed it a couple of weeks ago, and I recommend it to anyone who likes smart, heartfelt science fiction and fantasy.

    While I don’t feel any urgency to run out and pick up the new volume of Kanako Inuki’s Presents (CMX) the day they come out, I always pick it up eventually. Aside from its old-school horror charms, this series is an excellent palate cleanser. The short stories of gifts gone wrong and horrible things happening to terrible people are very pleasant diversions to enjoy between chunkier series.

    Speaking of pleasant diversions, Shin Mashiba’s Nightmare Inspector: Yumekui Kenbun (Viz) certainly counts. It’s certainly not the best paranormal-investigator manga you could select, but given how many entries there are in that category, that’s hardly a damning criticism. People plagued with bad dreams turn to Hiruko for help, though they shouldn’t expect any sympathy, and Mashiba turns out some amusing, generally effective episodes as a result. Mashiba’s beautiful, detailed artwork is the strongest selling point for this series.